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Shifting Perspectives: A Mists talent analysis for cats and moonkin, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we (still) feel talented. Last week, I talked about talent tiers 1 through 3; this week, we'll pick up the bottom half. Once again, I apologize in advance for the terrible puns in the subheaders. (They're unbearable, I know.) Tier 4: Soul of the Force of Nature Incarnate This tier is both the most interesting tier and the least interesting tier in the list. It's the most interesting, because, well, this one directly affects your DPS, unlike all those other "silly" healing talents. Unfortunately, that also makes it the least interesting, because that means theorycrafters will just figure out what works the best, and everybody picks that one. The best-case scenario is that all the talents end up reasonably balanced, so I'm going to approach this discussion with that in mind. First up is Soul of the Forest, which is a fairly bland passive talent. For easily distracted people like me, though, passive is good. Passive means "I don't have to do anything special to get a DPS increase out of this thing." Joking aside, it'll probably end up (once the balancing is complete) as narrowly the highest-DPS talent for feral and balance, but only if you get to stay attacking the boss 100% of the time. Any off-DPS time starts to cut into its value significantly.
Shifting Perspectives: An easier rotation for balance druids in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we teach our treants how to charge their lasers. Last week, we covered the issues that moonkin were having in Cataclysm. Happily, I'm able to say that the new design for Mists of Pandaria has corrected many of the glaring issues that I identified. While numbers remain fluid, of course, there's been some large quality-of-life fixes that have made moonkin much easier to play for the newcomer. I'm afraid, however, that somethings still remain that could use a tweak. A simplified rotation DoT abilities reworked First, while the mechanic of Moonfire becoming Sunfire while in a Solar Eclipse remains, both spells now have separate timers and no longer overwrite each other. This means that you can cast a Moonfire before entering Solar Eclipse, then cast Sunfire (with the same button, yay) and have two DoTs ticking for damage on the target.
The Art of War(craft): Must-have PvP talents for druids in 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Art of War(craft), covering battlegrounds and world PvP, and Blood Sport, with the inside line for arena enthusiasts. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Battlemaster Zach Yonzon, old-world PvP grinder and casual battleground habitué, rambles on about anything and everything PvP. Let's try to get you prepared for Cataclysm, shall we? In the new (banged-up, broken and burnt) world of the expansion, battlegrounds play will stand toe to toe with arenas as far as gear acquisition and quite possibly have even better participation. You don't want to miss out on that. Today we'll discuss the best PvP talents you can pick up as a druid, and you can decide for yourself what other talents to round out your PvP spec. Perhaps the biggest change for druids in patch 4.0.1 is a new mechanic for balance druids called Eclipse, which relies on the buildup of lunar or solar energy conferred by casting either nature or arcane damage spells, respectively. This means that balance druids will be constantly trying to achieve an Eclipse by casting spells from one school, then shifting to another school once they've gotten the bonus. Out of all specs, balance plays the most differently compared to before the patch, but everyone gets fun tools to use in PvP. Let's check out all these toys across all specs.
Breakfast Topic: Design a unique healing spell
There has been quite a bit of talk on the forums about the various spells each of the healing classes have available to them and how those might be expanded in Cataclysm. One poster asked when we'll see healing variants of some various DPS spells like Cone of Healing or Rain of Healing (which was actually announced for Shaman). This led to a fun little conversation here at WoW.com between Dawn Moore, Chase Christian, Elizabeth Harper and myself. We came up with ideas like Holyfiend, a pet that healed people. You could either target it or set it to "aggressive" and it would heal people at random. Another idea was a talent turning a paladin's Consecration into an area healing effect that ticked when stood in (standing in stuff on the floor is good?). There was also the idea of creating a healing wand similar to the healing rod from Final Fantasy VI that did healing instead of damage on the target you attacked. What would be some interesting mechanics you'd like to see turned into a healing ability? Would you turn the moonkin's little treants into mini resto druids? How about something like Pestilence that spread your heal over time spells to the rest of your party?
Patch 3.3 PTR: Druid changes (so far)
Hail, druids. There really aren't too many known changes to our class on the patch 3.3 PTR. As I write this, the only gameplay change you're likely to notice will be the buff/nerf to pet avoidance, which will only affect the Balance talent Force of Nature. More experienced Balance players will have to chime in here, because the wording on the change makes it sound like they're referencing an existing feature. I'm racking my brain trying to remember if Blizzard's ever done anything to tinker with the treants' survivability versus AoE damage, and I don't think they have. My guess is that the wording is just in line with similar changes in other classes with access to pets. Anyway, the change reads as follows: Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. For PvP, I think this is going to be business as usual, because the treants have historically been weak to AoE, and a key part of Balance arena strategy is timing a treants cast when your enemy's AoE or escape abilities are on cooldown. For PvE, it's a considerable buff, and it means that you'll no longer have to /headdesk over losing a key damage cooldown to a boss AoE.Apart from that, the only other known change to the class is a bug fix on rank 15 Rejuvenation (correcting the base duration from 15 seconds to 12 seconds), but we'll keep an eye on the PTR for you, and any additional changes will be noted here.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Balance Druids
Now that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is live, and the patch notes are up, we have some solid information on Druid talents as they're being tested. Here is what the patch revealed:Balance treeIf you were to invest three points into your Brambles tier three talent, you will not only have the current 75% boost to damage caused by Thorns and Entangling Roots, but your Treants will have their damage boosted by 15%. In addition, all damage caused by Treants, and any attacks done to you while Barkskin is active, have a 15% chance of dazing the target for three seconds. Actually, Force of Nature, which summons your Treants, is having its cooldown reduced from three minutes to two. This will be a nifty talent for Moonkin in battlegrounds and arena, although it won't be enough to convert all of those Restoration druids to the ways of the Giant Chicken.
